Zero Separation (2 page)

His hip and leg felt as if they were on fire. He sat heavily in the sand and stretched out his right leg. The pain in his hip was unrelenting and from experience he knew there was only one way to combat the agony—and it was time. From a side pocket he withdrew a small leather kit that held several prefilled hypodermic syringes. He had no time to waste rolling up a sleeve. He pulled the plastic cap off with his mouth then extracted a razor-sharp stiletto from a scabbard in his boot and sliced an opening in the fabric of his fatigues. He jabbed the needle into the flesh of his thigh and hungrily pressed the plunger. Moments later he felt the warm embrace of the morphine.

With the cylinders secured inside the plane, his comrade returned with the truck. He pulled himself to his feet, tested his hip, and limped as fast as he could to the C-130. The man at his side knew better than to offer any sympathy or assistance.

He climbed aboard and threw himself into a seat as the cargo door was closed. He strapped in, pulled off his helmet and goggles, followed by his watch cap and headset. In one practiced motion he unfurled the kaffiya he'd used to protect his face. He smoothed his shock white beard then ran his hands back through his equally
white hair. He wasn't an old man; only forty-three years of age, but after the plane crash that ruined his hip and the vertebrae in his back, his hair and beard had turned pure white.

The C-130 roared down the road at full power, lifted off into the night, and flew low and fast. His pain had eased and he leaned his head back against the bulkhead and closed his eyes. As he always did, he mentally replayed each element of the night's operation and analyzed each and every detail. The footprints and tire tracks would soon be obliterated by the shifting windblown sands. All they'd left behind was a collection of dead mercenaries and known criminals. Combined with the heroin and a burned-out, bullet-riddled car, it would look like a drug deal gone bad. He'd executed a perfect misdirection, and it was unlikely anyone would probe further.

He opened his eyes and took in the view of the cylinders now in his possession, and a small smile crept to his lips. It had taken a long time, but part of Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction had finally been recovered and were now his. He understood the destructive power. Inside each canister was a hundred pounds of anthrax spores. Once the spores were dispersed from an airplane upwind of a major city, the world's single deadliest terrorist act in history would be unstoppable.

He envisioned the scenario: The first flu-like symptoms would show up in about twenty-four hours. More than enough time for him and his men to escape, spread out across the globe, and vanish. While he sat back and watched the aftermath on television, hundreds of thousands of people would flood the local hospitals. Antibiotic stockpiles would deplete almost immediately. People would start to die from respiratory shutdown. High fever would give way to shock, then cyanosis as victims turned blue, gasping their last breaths. Within a week, millions would be sick and dying. The sheer numbers of casualties would spark a nationwide panic. Many of the infected would have traveled away from the target city before their symptoms hit, leading a frenzied population to believe that the unseen attacks had occurred in many cities. Rioting would
break out and from there the ensuing violence would threaten a complete breakdown of social services. The case fatality rate for inhaled anthrax spores was upwards of 75 percent, so in the end, as many as a million people could die from the contents of one cylinder. He had six. He felt a unique sensation of power as he savored the reality that he alone could annihilate millions of people. He pictured his first target, the gleaming white monuments: the Pentagon, the White House, and the Capitol building—when he was finished they'd all be deserted. He thought back on his training, to the day he'd become a firm believer in the concept that world peace was in fact possible—but a great deal of killing needed to happen first.

Six months later

“I don't like this,” Michael Ross said from the pilot's seat. “We need to do something else.”

A flash of lightning briefly lit up the darkened cockpit, and Donovan Nash saw the concern on Michael's face. Dead ahead, rapidly building thunderstorms boiled across the horizon, staccato bursts of cloud-to-ground lightning peppering the earth. Before he could agree with Michael, the Gulfstream sank abruptly.

“Hang on!” Michael shouted the warning as he shoved both throttles all the way to the stops. The Rolls-Royce engines spooled up, their distinctive high-pitched whine filled the cockpit, and the airplane strained against the unseen river of air. Turbulence slammed into the airplane and tossed them up and down in the violent night sky. For a split second Donovan felt the air in the cockpit turn supercharged, the hair on his arms buzzed a brief warning, and then it seemed that a flashbulb went off a foot in front of his face. Blinded, Donovan fought the spots that danced before his eyes and felt the sizzle of adrenaline hit his system. His ears popped from the pressure change. A moment later, he heard the deafening roar of thunder.

Michael banked the Gulfstream hard to the left. “We're out of here. I'm breaking it off to the south! Tell the tower we just took a lightning strike!”

Donovan blinked savagely to clear his vision while the distinct smell of ozone filled the cockpit. Heavy rain pelted the windscreen.

“What's flashing?” Michael asked. “How bad did we get hit?”

“We lost the right generator.” Donovan took a quick look at the overhead panel as well as the circuit breaker panel. Cloud-to-cloud discharges bolted across the horizon. The orange-purple glow expanded as it danced upward toward the stratosphere. Tendrils of white-hot lightning arced from the maelstrom and peppered the ground below. The entire western sky lit up with so many individual bursts of lightning that it looked like a solid wall.

“I'm thinking we should break out of this any second.” Michael called out as another blistering display of lightning lit up the sky around them.

Donovan found he was holding his breath, mostly out of wonder, but also some trepidation. He'd seen the weather charts before they'd left Washington D.C. A fast-moving front was sweeping down from the northwest, and now it was creating an unyielding line of severe weather marching southward across Florida.

It was just the two of them on this leg. The
Spirit of da Vinci
, one of Eco-Watch's, sixty-million-dollar special-purpose airborne scientific platforms, needed to be in West Palm Beach to begin a series of proving runs for a new camera system. Underneath all the added equipment, the
da Vinci
was essentially a Gulfstream IV corporate jet—minus all the aesthetics. In the rear cabin, among the racks of electronic gear, were modular science stations. The most recently installed was a state-of-the-art, high-resolution imaging system that was slated to begin official flight testing the next morning.

“This is getting uglier by the minute,” Michael said as he tightened his harness.

“Forget about landing in West Palm Beach. Once we get out of this, we can figure out where to go.” Donovan winced as another burst of lightning lit up the cockpit. Michael was more than his longtime colleague—they were more like brothers. Their deep friendship and considerable flying experience had been honed by over a decade of flying together all over the world. Officially, Donovan was the boss, a detail that Michael frequently ignored, though
Donovan was smart enough to understand that that was one of the ingredients that made everything work. With a camaraderie and understanding that had been forged in hundreds of dangerous situations just like this one, there was no one Donovan trusted more at the controls than Michael.

They were out over the ocean, paralleling the worst of the weather. As they flew toward a small cluster of harmless rain showers that had popped up over the ocean, they clipped the top of the wispy clouds and the airplane buffeted momentarily. Michael couldn't avoid the next one, and the
da Vinci
hit it dead center. The precipitation hissed passed the windows and the Gulfstream reeled from the turbulence, its nearly hundred-foot wingspan flexed up and down in the dark clouds.

They blew through multiple cloud layers. Each sliver of clear air allowed them an all too brief view of the squall line dead ahead. Donovan often thought of this as a three-dimensional chess game played at three hundred miles per hour. They couldn't see the massive anvil tops above them, but he knew the line of thunderstorms blossomed well above fifty thousand feet.

“I saw some lights dead ahead.” Michael pointed off the nose as the Gulfstream broke out of the clouds into smoother air. He wordlessly pushed up the throttles, and the
da Vinci
gathered speed immediately.

“We're due east of West Palm Beach. If we can—”

“You smell that?” Michael interrupted and snapped his head toward Donovan.

Donovan turned toward the darkened cabin and tested the air. It only took a moment to confirm what Michael had detected. Smoke.

“We need to get this thing on the ground. Now. Is that an airport out there?” Michael pointed. “See the rotating beacon, just this side of the interstate?”

“That's Boca Raton.” Donovan typed KBCT into the flight management system and grabbed the microphone. Donovan
watched as the FMS data confirmed that it was the Boca Raton airport. The acrid smell of burning insulation continued to drift up into the cockpit.

“Tell them that's where we're landing.” Michael pulled on his oxygen mask and then banked the
da Vinci
and began to slow the speeding jet.

“Tower, this is Eco-Watch zero one,” Donovan transmitted. “We've got Boca Raton in sight at twelve o'clock and eight miles. We'd like a straight-in approach for runway two-three.”

“Roger, Eco-Watch zero one. You're cleared for a visual approach to Boca Raton. Contact Boca Tower on 118.42. He knows you're coming.”

Donovan clicked on a flashlight, turned, and pointed the beam of light into the cabin. The smoke was visible, and as Donovan played the narrow beam around the cabin, he guessed that the smoke was originating from the aft equipment rack.

“Still burning?” Michael said through his mask while concentrating on the fast approaching airport.

“It's not bad, yet. It looks like the lightning fried the new equipment we just had installed. We've still got all our aircraft systems—everything we need to get this thing on the ground is still working.” Donovan spun in the frequency for Boca Raton. “We'll deal with it on the ground. Just keep flying. We're almost there.”

Lauren peeked in on Abigail, making sure her two-year-old daughter was tucked in and sleeping peacefully. She adjusted the blanket and then lightly rested her hand on Abigail's forehead, taking in the smooth skin and the perfect smell of baby shampoo.

She quietly left Abigail's room and went back to her own bedroom. She checked that the baby monitor was on, and then collected the paperwork she'd brought home from the office. As a senior meteorological consultant with the Defense Intelligence Agency, the scientific articles were required reading and piled up quickly if she didn't stay current.

Lauren felt her frustration rise, Donovan should have called by now. She operated best with order and discipline in her world and right now, at least as far as her husband went, she had nothing remotely resembling order. He'd been especially distant and distracted before he'd left for Florida. She'd been thinking about it all evening and couldn't shake the feeling that something was wrong. There had been little signs for weeks now until Lauren wasn't even sure when things began to change—only that Donavan was different, or they were both somehow different. Theirs was a relationship trapped in a loop of silent discontent, and she wasn't sure how to identify the issues, let alone break the cycle.

Lauren headed downstairs to make herself a cup of hot tea, but as she passed the closed door to the study, she heard a small beep coming from inside the darkened room. She clicked on the light and went in to investigate. The smoke alarms were fine, they'd been checked recently. The bookshelves held nothing electric, so she moved to the desk just as the beep sounded again. Lauren
turned toward the credenza and pushed a key on the laptop computer. The moment the screen blinked to life, she found the problem—a low-battery alert. She located the power cord on the back of the drive and discovered that it was loose. She firmed up the connection and sat down to make sure the battery was going to accept the charge.

It seemed odd that the cord could have worked itself out. In a house with a two-year-old, Abigail was usually the easiest explanation, but she wasn't ever allowed in this room. A row of books lined the wall behind the computer, and as Lauren looked closer, she noticed some dust. In the dust she spotted marks that told her the dictionary had been slid in and out recently.

Curious, Lauren knew that when Donovan needed help spelling something, he defaulted to the computer. There was no way he was going to wrestle with the massive volume to verify a word. She pulled the dictionary out and was surprised when a DVD slid out from between the pages and fell to the floor. Using her thumb and middle finger she picked up and studied the disc. The title,
One Earth
, was printed in bold black letters, followed by the warning that the DVD was an Academy Screener copy, for awards consideration only and not for public viewing.

Lauren knew exactly what she was holding.
One Earth
hadn't been released yet, but somehow Donovan had gotten his hands on a reviewer's copy of the documentary about Meredith Barnes. Over the years there'd been many television shows about the life and untimely death of celebrity conservationist Meredith Barnes, but this was a major Hollywood production and there was early Academy Award buzz for the project.